blog redesign

I kept my previous design for Asian Meanderings for more than six years, using a modified version of WordPress’ Twenty-Ten theme with black background, customized headers, and other little tweaks here and there. The new design is actually the Twenty-Sixteen theme with gold-based background (although I may change this in the near future). It’s still basically the same, but different…

I would very much like to resurrect this blog and return to semi-regular posts. Over the past year or more, I have had very little motivation as I have developed into a very solid routine of working (I’m an English teacher in Phuket, Thailand) and being lazy during my limited days off. Indeed, the last time I went anywhere significant was my Cambodian trip in mid-April 2013 although there have been a few English camps in neighboring provinces since then.

With Aed Carabao, lead singer of Thailand’s most popular rock group — Carabao — in Patong, April 2013

Asian Meanderings has never been the “chronicle of my life in Thailand” that I’d envisioned when I arrived here some twelve years ago. While I do a fairly good job at detailing my day-to-day activities on Facebook, I’ve never done the same with this blog. Too much “work” involved? I seem to suffer from chronically-slow Internet service whenever I do want to do something “significant” (such as uploading photos) online. I soon become frustrated and give up.

Aside from attending various local festivals each year, I don’t really do much during my free-time aside from read and work on my stamp and postcard collections. I have other blogs for those activities (and I haven’t missed a day on “A Stamp A Day” since I started on July 1, 2016). I have written about a number of the festivals over the years but, the only thing that really changes annually are the attempts at different photographic angles.

In the past, I tackled such lethargy simply by starting a new blog as a new theme/look surrounding my words always seems to do something to my brain. Most of those attempts quickly fell by the wayside. I had reading and teaching blogs in the distant past that are long- (and best-) forgotten. My postcard blog (originally called “Please, Mr. Postman!” but re-titled The POSTCARD TRAVELLER Blog last year as I had begun creating a website by that name) and first stamp collecting blog (Philatelic Pursuits) are two that I’ve enjoyed doing and have new entries in the works for. Both were somewhat curtailed by my determination to maintain A Stamp A Day…

I have some ideas…

Rather than starting a new blog for my plans, I will try to incorporate them here. I am thinking about creating a new blog name (Mark’s Mindless Meanderings, perhaps?). I am also trying to decide on a new theme. I do like the old black-and-gold design but it hasn’t been changed for more than six years, I think, and these days I prefer something lighter. Other changes may include revamping categories and tags (daunting, to say the least).

What about content?

In Tiananmen Square, Beijing – June 2003

My idea is to create entries based on past experiences in my life. I have very few photographs that predate 2004 other than a mixed box of pictures my sister sent a few years ago. There are a few scattered from the earliest years of my childhood and then quite a few from around late 1992 through mid-1994 or so. I’m currently scanning the lot of them and trying to determine ballpark dates. I have long maintained a spreadsheet of significant events in my life and will attempt to assign spots to the scanned photos. From time to time in the recent past, I can use these resources as the basis for various articles, sort of a “jumbled autobiography”. If I tag them properly (year/month), I could use the entries as the basis if I ever decide to write a full autobiography (something I’d like to do for myself, at least; my grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease and that experience resulted in my becoming afraid of forgetting my own past).

One other change I would like to make is to cut down on the sheer wordiness of my entries (present one excluded). I may post a number of photos simply with (estimated) date and location/event. Other posts may include a bit of history surrounding the location/event or how it related to what I was doing at the time. In short, I’ll be making it up as I go along but with certain goals in mind.

Return to Johnson County Industrial Airport (Olathe, Kansas) following Damage Control training at the Fleet Training Center, Naval Air Station San Diego (California) – just prior to Christmas 1983

Apart from these few general ideas, I have no clue as to when and in what form these changes will occur. I can only say that I am motivated enough — for the first time this year — to write on Asian Meanderings and let anybody still around know that, yes, changes are afoot….

I spent some time in the internet cafe last night implementing a few changes to the blog. As always, I had some difficulty as what worked upstairs on my laptop gave me problems on the ancient computers downstairs. Although the Suffusion theme worked fine on the “live” blog when I tested it briefly a few nights ago, I made the “mistake” of uploading the most recent version of the theme before trying it out this time around. The entire WordPress dashboard completely disappeared! I ended up having to delete this version via FTP (I use FileZilla), replacing it with a year-old version. That worked…